-
Yalta Conference
At Yalta, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions regarding the future progress of the war and the postwar world. -
3AD captures Cologne crosses Rhine
-
3AD battles in central Germany
-
Germany surrenders to Allies
On May 7, 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies, bringing an end to the European conflict in World War II. General Alfred Jodl, representing the German High Command, signed the unconditional surrender of both east and west forces in Reims, France, which would take effect the following day -
Potsdam Conference
Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the Allied leaders agreed to meet over the summer at Potsdam to continue the discussions that had begun at Yalta -
US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima
The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. -
USSR enters war against Japan
On this day in 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. -
Japan surrenders - end of ww2
Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.
By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated -
Winston Churchill delivers "iron Curtain" speech
Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Churchill's speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War. -
Truman Doctrine- Truman declares active role in Greek Civil War
President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $17 billion (approximately $160 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. -
Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia
Under pressure from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Eduard Benes allows a communist-dominated government to be organized. Although the Soviet Union did not physically intervene (as it would in 1968), Western observers decried the virtually bloodless communist coup as an example of Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe. -
Berlin Blockade by USSR begins
The Berlin blockade (24 June 1948;– 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under allied control. -
Berlin Blockade Ends
On May 12, 1949, an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens. -
NATO was ratified
The United States and 11 other nations establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact aimed at containing possible Soviet aggression against Western Europe. NATO stood as the main U.S.-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War. -
Communist take control of China
Chinese communism has had a remarkable continuity of leadership. Mao Zedong (W-G: Mao tse-Tung, 1893-1976) and his colleagues were party members in the 1920s. Mao was instrumental in establishing an early form of Chinese communism in the years 1928-34. He helped to develop it and create the military and political strategy in the Yenan years of 1935-45 that won the civil war in 1949. He then went on to mold communist China and ruled it - in his last years at least in name - until his death in Sep -
USSR exploded its first atomic bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name "First Lightning." In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They also placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals. The atomic explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to "Trinity," the fir -
Truman approved H-bomb development
U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. -
Korean War Begins
CONTENTS PRINT CITE
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the fo -
Federal Civil Defence Administration Established
Truman started to reinvigorate efforts to think about how a civil defense program could be organized for the home front in a nuclear age, not in an age of conventional weapons, in a nuclear age. And that effort, from 1949, led to the civil defense, the creation of the Federal Civil Defense Administration in January of 1951. And it continued from there. -
A bombs developed by britain
Britain successfully tests its first atomic bomb at the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest coast of Australia. During World War II, 50 British scientists and engineers worked on the successful U.S. atomic bomb program at Los Alamos, New Mexico. After the war, many of these scientists were enlisted into the secret effort to build an atomic bomb for Britain. Work on the British A-bomb officially began in 1947, and Los Alamos veteran William Penney served as the program head. In February 1952, -
Nuclear arms race atomic test series of 11 explosions at Nevada test site
The nuclear arms race was central to the Cold War. Many feared where the Cold War was going with the belief that the more nuclear weapons you had, the more powerful you were. Both America and Russia massively built up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.The world greatly changed when USA exploded the H-bomb in 1952. This one bomb was smaller in size than the Hiroshima atomic bomb but 2500 times more powerful. -
RAND report on the "vulnerability of US Strategic Air Power"
This Research Memorandum discusses some of the difficulties faced by Western diplomacy in attempting to oppose effectively the severe Soviet air-defense policy of the years 1950-1953. The study examines in detail the ingenious diplomatic formula which the Soviets used to describe and justify their action against planes that threatened to intrude upon their air space. -
Korean War Ends
-
KGB Established
The Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopanosti of the Soviet Union, also known as the KGB, was established in March 1954 in Moscow. This organization was originally designed to be a state security committee and was attached to the Council of Ministers. However, it operated more independently than any of the other bodies of government within the Soviet Union. The KGB was the world’s largest spy and state-security machine, involved in all aspects of life of everyday people in the Soviet Union. -
US Spnosors coup overthrow of Guatemalan government
On May 23, 1997 the CIA released several hundred formerly classified documents pertaining to the United States involvement in the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Although representing only a fraction of the existing government files, these records nonetheless revealed the determination of the CIA to prohibit the spread of communism to the nations of Latin America during the Cold War. -
Vietnam Split at 17th Parallel
Discussions on the Vietnam issue started at the conference just as France suffered its worst military defeat of the war, when Vietnamese forces captured the French base at Dien Bien Phu. In July 1954, the Geneva Agreements were signed. As part of the agreement, the French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country. -
Warsaw pact was formed
In May 1955, the “treaty of mutual friendship, co-operation and mutual assistance” was signed between the People’s Republic of Albania, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the Hungarian People’s Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People’s Republic, the Rumanian People’s Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Czechoslovak Republic. It was the Communist counteraction to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The Warsaw Pact came to be seen as quite a potent -
USSR sent military aid to Afghanistan
-
Vostok rocket launched 1st ICBM
First launched in 1957, the R-7 became the biggest leap in the world's rocketry since German A-4. Ironically, developed to be the first Soviet ICBM, the R-7 grew obsolete as a weapon even before it started flying. Yet, as a launch-vehicle, it continued serving Russian space program more than half a century after it was originally conceived. In the 21st century, the R-7-derived space boosters have remained only vehicles delivering Russian manned spacecraft into orbit. -
Soviets launched first man made satellite
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S. -
Sputnik II launched - Laika died in Space
Sputnik 2 was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit and was the first biological spacecraft. It was a 4 meter high cone-shaped capsule with a base diameter of 2 meters. It contained several compartments for radio transmitters, a telemetry system, a programming unit, a regeneration and temperature control system for the cabin, and scientific instruments. A separate sealed cabin contained the experimental dog Laika. -
Explorer 1 launched
Explorer-I, officially known as Satellite 1958 Alpha, was the first United States earth satellite and was sent aloft as part of the United States program for the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958. It was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology under the direction of Dr. William H. Pickering. The satellite instrumentation of Explorer-I was designed and built by Dr. James Van Allen of the State University of Iowa. -
Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba
In 1951, he ran for a seat in the Cuban House of Representatives as a member of the reformist Ortodoxo Party, but General Batista seized power in a bloodless coup d'etat before the election could be held. Various groups formed to oppose Batista's dictatorship, and on July 26, 1953, Castro led some 160 rebels in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba--Cuba's second largest military base. Castro hoped to seize weapons and announce his revolution from the base radio station, but the -
JFK elected Pres of USA
-
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba
The first part of the plan was to destroy Castro’s tiny air force, making it impossible for his military to resist the invaders. On April 15, 1961, a group of Cuban exiles took off from Nicaragua in a squadron of American B-26 bombers, painted to look like stolen Cuban planes, and conducted a strike against Cuban airfields. However, it turned out that Castro and his advisers knew about the raid and had moved his planes out of harm’s way. Frustrated, Kennedy began to suspect that the plan the CIA -
East Germany builds berlin Walls
By 1961, Cold War tensions over Berlin were running high again. For East Germans dissatisfied with life under the communist system, West Berlin was a gateway to the democratic West. Between 1949 and 1961, some 2.5 million East Germans fled from East to West Germany, most via West Berlin. By August 1961, an average of 2,000 East Germans were crossing into the West every day. Many of the refugees were skilled laborers, professionals, and intellectuals, and their loss was having a devastating effec -
Cuban Missile Crisis
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. Construction of several missile sites began in the late summer, but U.S. intelligence discovered evidence of a general Soviet arms build-up on Cuba, in -
Nuclear Test ban Treaty Ratified
John F. Kennedy had supported a ban on nuclear weapons testing since 1956. He believed a ban would prevent other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons, and took a strong stand on the issue in the 1960 presidential campaign. Once elected, President Kennedy pledged not to resume testing in the air and promised to pursue all diplomatic efforts for a test ban treaty before resuming underground testing. He envisioned the test ban as a first step to nuclear disarmament. -
China Explodes its first atomic bomb
In July 1960 Chairman Mao Zedong called on Chinese scientists to rely on their own efforts and develop China's atomic bomb within eight years. On October 16, 1964, China successfully exploded its first atomic bomb. The Chinese people had finally developed their own nuclear technology. On the same day, the Chinese government made a solemn promise to the world that it developed nuclear weapons only for the purpose of self-defense and safeguarding national security. China would never at any time -
US sends troops to the DR
On 24 April 1965, young military officers rose in revolt in the Dominican Republic. Four days later US troops invaded the country. It was the first US military intervention in Latin America in more than three decades. These dramatic events brought to center stage a small, backward Caribbean republic where until 1916 civil war and dictatorship had been the rule, democracy and honest government the fleeting exception. -
US commits combats troops to South Vietnam
This was the first commitment of American combat troops in South Vietnam and there was considerable reaction around the world to the new stage of U.S. involvement in the war. Predictably, both communist China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued to apply its military might on behalf of the South Vietnamese. In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain -
B- 52s Bomb North Vietnam
Although the U.S. command refuses to confirm publicly the location of targets, U.S. B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam for the first time since November 1967. The bombers struck in the vicinity of Vinh, 145 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone. -
President Johnson does not run for the presidency and Richard Nixon elected for Pres of USA
-
Apollo II lands on the moon
-
Pres Nixon extends Vietnam War to Cambodia
President Richard Nixon gives his formal authorization to commit U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against communist troop sanctuaries in Cambodia. -
SALT 1 signed
Johnson therefore called for strategic arms limitations talks (SALT), and in 1967, he and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. Johnson said they must gain “control of the ABM race,” and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued that the more each reacted to the other’s escalation, the more they had chosen “an insane road to follow." -
Cease fire in Vietnam between North Vietnam and US
-
Egypt and Syria attack Israel : Egypt requested soviet aid
in 1967, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by surprise, Egyptian troops swept deep into the Sinai Peninsula, while Syria struggled to throw occupying Israeli troops out of the Golan Heights. Israel counterattacked and recaptured the Golan Heights. A cease-fire went into effect on October 25, 1973.